The image above is a screencap of the program Mac Defender. The program runs a “scan” of Mac computers, then tell users that–surprise!–their Mac is crawling with malware. that’s quite alright though, because if the user just enters their credit card info, the registered version of Mac Defender will save the day, ridding the Mac of those dastardly viruses.

Of course, Mac Defender’s not a real anti-virus program. It’s an example of rogue security software, malicious programs that claim to be protecting computers, all the way trying to bilk users out of credit card info, and in some cases hijacking their browsers and making the computers generally unusable.

I’ve never owned a Mac, but I’ve seen these types of attacks on PCs dozens of times, both on my own PC and on those of other users. For an unsavvy user, rogue software is the perfect trap: it preys on the average user’s fear of having their computer attacked. And while not a new concept by any means, it does present a new threat for Mac users, who until recently have believed themselves immune from malware. Ironically, it’s the perception that Macs are invulnerable that may lead Mac users to be unusually trusting of apps that find their way onto Macs.

Apple has published instructions on how to remove the rogue programs on their site. They promise to release an update that will take care of this particular vulnerability, but it’s important to remember that no user should leave the safety of his or her computer in the hands of the OS maker. It’s always more prudent in the long run to rely on dedicated anti-virus programs-as well as good ole’ common sense.

]]>https://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/yup-macs-get-viruses-too/feed/0soblackandblueMacProtectorThe Cognitive Dissonance of Old School Video Game Covershttps://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/the-cognitive-dissonance-of-old-school-video-game-covers/
https://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/the-cognitive-dissonance-of-old-school-video-game-covers/#respondFri, 13 May 2011 14:08:26 +0000http://tekspeak.wordpress.com/?p=358]]>

There is nothing more infuriating that buying a product based on advertising, only to realize that the actual product bears not even a passing resemblance to what was advertised. Fast food, movies- it always ends in the same bitter, bitter disappointment.

Perhaps no one perfected the art of the bait and switch better than old school video game boxcover artists. The picture at the top of this post is the cover of the first Megaman. Besides looking like it was drawn by a third grade (Depth perception? What’s that?) It looks nothing like the actual game. For starters, Megaman isn’t actually a man, as the name and cover image suggests. He’s a boy. He also doesn’t carry a handgun. He has a hand that’s a gun, but it most certainly is not a handgun.

I bet you just looked back up at the cover image just now. See? Cognitive dissonance. It’s your mind telling you “Wait, what is this, I don’t even…” Just be glad that we now live in a time where actual video game screen caps are cool enough to be cover art.

]]>https://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/the-cognitive-dissonance-of-old-school-video-game-covers/feed/0soblackandbluegogogogoGuess Who’s Backhttps://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/guess-whos-back/
https://tekspeak.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/guess-whos-back/#respondSat, 30 Apr 2011 14:43:51 +0000http://tekspeak.wordpress.com/?p=351]]>My last post on this blog was November 20th of last year. A lot has happened since then: I’ve written another story set to be published (more on that later… hopefully) and I’ve gotten an internship at a good company doing what I love perhaps more than anything besides writing. I’ve also been swamped with schoolwork and other responsibilities. Hence the long span of inactivity.

Of course, chalking my absence on this blog up to lack of time is the lazy way out. For two thirds of my life I’ve been telling myself and others that I wanted to be a writer, that writing was my “passion”. Why then, didn’t I take the time out of my schedule to blog? Were all of those Giants games more important than the craft which I wish to pursue as a career? apparently I was, because since November 20th I’ve spent probably over 100 hours following pro football, and not a single hour writing about technology. I’ve spent more time watching Jessica Black’s “Friday” than I’ve spent writing. How depressing is that? Despite this, I’ve still been getting about 20 visitors a day on average, despite not promoting my site or posting content for nearly half a year.

To the people who inexplicably found their way here (thanks Google!): I’m going to start posting semi regularly again. It won’t be daily like back during last summer. I can’t even promise weekly. But I do promise that when I get free time I’ll post. Because honestly, this is what I love to do.

A little over a year ago, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was releasing, generating over $550 million in sales in five days with 4.7 million copies sold. That was a record, not only for video games, but for entertainment franchises period:No movie, album, or book has ever made that much money in as short a span. It’s only fitting that the next game in the CoD series would be the one to smash that record.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, the newest game in Activision’s Call of Duty series, is estimated to have made a monstrous $650 million dollars with 5.6 million units sold. To put those figures in perspective: The fastest selling album of all time sold a little over 3 million units in 7 days. The movie with the highest grossing five day debut, made a little over $200 million in five days.

What does this mean? It means Activision is pretty much king of the entertainment industry for the second year in a row. And that video games are that much closer to becoming the dominant form of leisure in North America–if they aren’t already. What a long way we’ve come from Atari.

Halloween is tomorrow, and there’s no better time to talk about candy. Candy is to Halloween what trees are to Christmas. And perhaps no candy is more representative of the holiday than candy corn. In fact, today is National Candy Corn Day (didn’t know there was such a thing? Neither did the author until a few hours ago). Millions of people consume the miniature treats every year without knowing the history behind them, or even what they’re made of.

So… What Are They Made Of?

In case you were expecting something exotic, like radioactive bits of an alien meteor, prepare to be disappointed. The main ingredients, just like they were in the 1880’s, are sugar and corn syrup–hence the name “candy corn”. Other ingredients are added as well, including marshmallow to make the final product soft, and coloring to give candy corn its distinctive yellow white and orange tint.

How Are They Made?

Original candy corn was created by hand. As you can imagine, that was a time consuming process; modern candy corn is created in an automated process. Remember when you used to fill up ice trays with Kool -Aid to make popsicles? It’s like that, but on a much larger scale. Tiny candy corn shaped molds are filled with three different color syrups– one for each color– and left to harden into the finished product.. All those millions of candy corns are then glazed, and put in bags to be sold.

How Much Candy Corn Is Made?

A lot. A single bag like the kind sold at Halloween can hold hundreds of candy corns. When you consider that millions of people buy those kinds of bags year round, not just during Halloween, then you can appreciate the sheer volume of candy corn consumed every year. The best estimates are that 20 million pounds are eaten annually. That’s the weight of 106,000 average American men. We’re not sure how many cavities that equals every year, but it’s probably a lot.

Every so often (approximately once a week or so) a piece of legislation is written that’s so mind-blowingly authoritarian that you wonder how exactly a congressperson could have enough nerve to introduce it on the floor of the Senate. The “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) is one of those pieces of legislation. Proposed by ssenators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Orin Hatch (R-UT), COICA would give the US government the authority to shut down any sites deemed to be dedicated to illegal file sharing.

The bill itself wouldn’t be a new law, so much as an addition to an old one, Chapter 113 of Title 18 in the US Code. A relatively small addendum, with major consequences. The scariest part of the bill? The fact that the the law, if passed, would apply to websites outside of US jurisdiction.

A bill like this raises a lot of red flags. Banning a site because of its content–even when said content might be perfectly legal in the country where the site resides–amounts to censorship. And once the censorship floodgates are opened, they can be extremely hard to close again. Which is why all internet users, not just those who download, should hope this bill never sees the light of day.

You’re on a a computer that belongs to someone else, and you don’t want to, or can’t, install a program you need to use.

You want to use two versions of the same program on the same machine.

You want to run a program while using much less system resources.

There are portable versions of many of the most popular programs available online. But what of the apps that don’t have a portable version readily available? In this installment of Tekspeak Guide, TS will show you how to make virtually (pun intended) any program portable.

Step 1: Download ThinApp Suite

ThinApp (formerly Thinstall) is a virtualization program from VMWare, the same company behind the ubiquitous Worskstation line of products. ThinApp captures an image of a program, and makes a miniature virtualized OS environment for it, enabling it to run without install.

Now, the ThinApp Suite runs for USD $5,000… going out on a limb, it’s safe to say that most of our readers aren’t going to spend five grand on a software. We’re not going to say where the copy used for this guide came from (hint: it rhymes with Florence) but needless to say, it was way, way below sticker price.

Once it’s installed, run ThinApp Setup Capture.

Step 2: Run a pre scan

Running a pre scan allows ThinApp to take a snapshot of your system and create a baseline. They recommend a clean Windows, but it works fine on a PC with about a dozen or so programs already installed.

Note: You cannot have the program you wish to make portable already installed when you do the pre-scan. ThinApp will designate the program as part of the baseline and not be able to capture an image of it once you do the post-scan.

Step 3: Install the App

Now you install the program (or set of programs) you want to make portable. I picked Microsoft Office 2003 because it’s the perfect candidate for a portable version: You often find yourself wanting to use it on computers other than your own; different versions of Office could cause problems when installed (or uninstalled) together; and it is often memory intensive, using large chunks of RAM.

Step 4: Run the post scan

After the apps installed smoothly (our installation of CS5 took a while) run the post scan, which basically checks for any programs installed since the pre scan.

Step 5: Choose entry points

In this step, you’ll be choosing which programs to turn into portable apps. Usually, just selecting all will do the trick. Click through the next few screens to save the selected files, then…

Step 6: Profit!

If it all goes to plan, you should have your programs saved as self contained executable files, which can run with no installation required. Congrats!

The NYC subway is great. It gets over five million people where they need to be every single weekday. But the subway, as the name suggests, is also below the ground. And the laws of physics dictate that more often than not, water will tend to end up collecting below ground.

Even on a dry day these pumps deal with millions of gallons of water–being underground in a city situated mainly of islands means lots of water– and on rainy days the amount of water pumped out is quite literally immeasurable. Periods of particularly intense rainfall, like a large storm, can be too much for the pumps to handle, causing delays or even stoppages in train service.

What happens when a really large storm hits the Big Apple? In 2004, Hurricane Frances wreaked havoc on the subway system, causing delays and/or suspensions in at least ten subway lines. And we may have to begin preparing for a sequel: Tropical Storm Nicole (not technically a hurricane until it makes landfall) is on course to hit the Northeast this weekend, bringing with it 60 mph winds and seven inches of rain per hour. For context, the MTA’s pumps can handle 1.5 inches of rain per hour. Which means we could be looking at near total shutdowns in subway service in large parts of the city. And after two twisters tore their way through Brooklyn, a tropical storm in NYC suddenly doesn’t seem too far fetched.

A lot of our readers did not have the chance to try out Windows 3.1. Yours truly was only three when it was first released. For all of those out there who have been yearning for the 16 bit goodness that is 3.1, good news: Site designer/web programmer Michael Vincent has a released an online Windows 3.1 simulator. Minesweeper, non-cascading windows–it’s all there, right in your browser.

Perhaps the coolest part of the site is the fact that an OS released less than twenty years ago can now be run in a web browser. I personally cannot wait to run 64 bit Windows 7 on my Firefox 10.0 in 2015.

It’s been nearly ten years since Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was released. For nearly a decade, fans have waited for news of a sequel.Now, that wait may possibly be sorta kind of almost close to over. Daniel Feit of Wired was fortunate enough to get his hands on the epilepsy inducing goodness that is Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and shares his first impressions. The biggies?

Easy mode is back: If you loved “Easy mode” on the first game in the series, or hated the complex control scheme of the sequel (ie me), you’ll be glad to hear that “easy mode” is back with a vengeance. The standard six Capcom buttons are now whittled down to three attack buttons and one aerial launcher button to initiate air combos. Then there’s an even easier easy mode, which allows you to do special moves without the traditional button & joystick combinations. No more having to spend 3 hours with your friends teaching them how to do a Shoryuken.

RIP sprites: The 2D sprites we have come to know and love are gone, in favor of “realistic” 3D modeling similar to Street Fighter IV. Tekspeak is having trouble deciding whether this is a good development or a bad one.

Where did all the stage go? MvC vets are used to having expansive boards in which to battle. The stages in the newest installment are decidedly less roomy:

…which hopefully lead to less evading and more action (I’m looking at you, wall climbing Strider Hiryu).

What does this mean for us, the fans? It means a new installment that will try to stay true to its roots despite drastic changes in gameplay and visual style. And I’m sure you guys can’t wait to see if they succeed.